With all the volatility in the crypto marketplace coupled with the launch of COTI’s treasury, Mr. Bar-Geffen decided to create a video where he addressed COTI community’s questions and concerns. In the course of doing this Shahaf shared some nuggets of what the COTI developers are up to and how these revelations will positively affect COTI hodlers and depositors in 2022. Below is mostly a verbatim transcription of this Q & A so it is written in a more relaxed, conversational tone. With that being said, just know, it can get a bit wordy or confusing since it is a transcription of an impromptu dialog, however the meaning of what Mr. Bar-Geffen imparts is clear; ‘There will be more ways to profit as a COTI liquidity provider.’
And just beyond Shahaf’s Q & A, is a curated article from Cardano.org. This article is an interview of Shahaf conducted by Cardano shortly after the Q & A and does cover many of the same things. It is more of a summary of Shahaf’s Q & A, if you are short on time.
Shahaf Bar-Geffen, CEO of COTI, Answers Question From the COTI Community – Feb 21, 2022
Hello everyone, this is Shahaf. Today is February 20th, and I’m here to answer community questions we have collected and, also, to reiterate what we’re building right now; the COTI Roadmap.
I’d like to begin with, you know, there has been quite a lot of discomfort recently, as I’ve seen in the channels, which is natural when the market fluctuates that much. We see quite a lot of people feeling discomfort and expressing that, it’s really OK, it’s natural. We’re here to answer everything. I’ve always been upfront to answer questions. I know this is going to change. The fundamentals remain very, very strong. I actually believe they’re stronger now. So without further ado, let me answer a few questions.
COTI’S ROADMAP UPDATES
Before we do that, I’d like to reiterate what we’re doing right now, so we’ve recently launched the Treasury. What’s next for the Treasury is obviously starting to funnel multiple revenue streams to the Treasury and then to you, those who deposit. That will happen both with Djed and with all other tokens that we plan on launching and everything else that is happening with COTI. Everything goes straight to the Treasury.
Related article: Solana’s Wormhole Bridge Hack Has Delayed Cardano’s Djed Release Date; COTI’s CEO Shahaf Bar-Geffen Explains Why.
What else in COTI’s future? Quite a few things; whether it’s you lending and borrowing, which we’ve discussed, but we’ve recently started considering the fact that there will be more tokens built on the trust chain this year, we may or may not open up the Treasury to other deposits (i.e. tokens built on COTI’s Trustchain) other than $COTI. So maybe you can deposit other types of tokens like governance tokens ($GOVI) or any other token based on the Trustchain. So that would happen from the Treasury down the line, as well. So that’s one big thing.
The thing I’m very excited for right now, and again, I’m not sure that everybody completely realized what we’re up to this is, as you know, we’ve released Trustchain 2.0 and I’ve said multiple times that the next thing to follow is MultiDAG 2.0. The fact that new types of tokens can be issued on top of the Trustchain, because of new capabilities that we’ve created. I would like to remind you of that fact. And I am not aware of any other DAG protocols that allowed tokenization on top of it. Usually, they just create a copy based on their handbook or form. This is very different.
Why is this important? Because it means that we’ll be able to grow the network from COTI Native to other types of tokens based on our network. It’s a new token standard and there’s great potential in this. Probably the first token built on our Trustchain using this new DAG protocol will be the governance token ($GOVI) for COTI’s Treasury. Again, the fact that you don’t have enough information right now about the governance token is because we haven’t released any information yet. We will do so at the right time. But, I mean, the model for governance token is already out there and has been for the past two years. So you can start planning ahead for this. Maybe Djed is issued on Cardano but COTI’s the issuer, so maybe there’s a way to bridge Djed into COTI’s ecosystem and issue Djed on top of Trustchain, as well. Interesting.
One of the most interesting things that we’re working on is with major enterprises to actually generate a token on top of Trustchain. So it was planned to do so a while back, but we weren’t fully ready for that and we didn’t want to issue a token, you know, on other networks we wanted to take everything to Trustchain. This is what we’re doing in 2022, and this will be quite big.
So this year, what’s important is the fact that COTI is growing from a one-point network, due to new technologies, to become a multiple tokens network and various use cases due to that. So this is the important thing and rewards everything that comes with this just funnels to the Treasury and to you. That’s the big news.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS FROM COTI’S COMMUNITY
So with that, in light of this, I’d like to answer a few questions:
One question we get asked a lot is. “Why did you stop sharing the transaction volume?” We had been releasing that almost every month last year and we stopped doing that. The reason I answered that yesterday in an internal group. It is mostly due to branding and positioning. When all we talk about is merchant volume, we may be wrongly perceived as a payment processor. We’re not that; we are a Layer-1 Protocol. We are ideal for payments, and we’ve built a lot of software with merchants, obviously, yes. But I don’t want COTI to be perceived as this glorified blockchain payment processor. This is not what I want to do. I want people to realize that we are a Layer-1. And if we focus all the attention on processing for merchants, we take away from COTI’s true potential. So this is why we stop publishing that. And, you know, with the new technologies, new use cases now arise with COTI, as I explained earlier, we’ve been publishing data that represents the entire network and other things. It’s not just that. Other than that, if you talk about merchant processing volume all the time, you may attract the wrong sort of regulators’ attention when there’s actually no need for us to be doing that.
So everything is going really well with COTI. We haven’t stopped publishing transaction volume because it’s not good, no, it’s great! It’s just because this is not the only thing we do, and we want people to see other use cases and other things that COTI is up to. Remember COTI is Layer-1 and this year, with MultiDAG 2.0, a lot of people will be developing. This is what’s more important for us.
People ask, “What’s the plan with this MultiDAG 2.0?” Well, I just talked about this enough (see above). I don’t want to reiterate everything again. But what I will add is that with Multidrug 2.0 we will be revamping other parts of our network. It means that we’ll have a new Explorer; a better Explorer for the network. The Bridge will be improved, as well, to support multiple tokens, and so on, and, so forth.
People have asked, what is the future of the Treasury? Again, I think I’ve touched that again. Governance, multiple revenue streams, and fees, the ability to deposit other types of tokens based on Trustchain, lending and borrowing, and so on and so forth. I think enough said.
Someone had asked, I think yesterday. He asked, “Hey, I see algorithmic stablecoins, does that mean that there is no there are no assets backing the stablecoin?” Wrong, actually, in order to mint Djed or the reserve coin, you actually need to deposit assets, you need to deposit ADA. That’s how it works. The fact that it’s algorithmic does not mean that it’s bad. There are multiple ways to do algorithmic stablecoins. This new approach, created by Cardano, is actually very robust and very good that it is backed by ADA, and I encourage you to see how you can go to Djed.xyz and read the white paper. You’ll get it right away. Or just watch videos. Here is the link – Djed’s Whitepaper – in case you haven’t seen that.
Related article: Solana’s Wormhole Bridge Hack Has Delayed Cardano’s Djed Release Date; COTI’s CEO Shahaf Bar-Geffen Explains Why.
People ask, “What’s going on with, I’m rephrasing, What’s going on with the bank accounts and debit cards?” “What about adoption metrics?” “Why do you create this product, and you don’t advertise it anywhere?” Well, to begin with, this is actually the first iteration, the first rollout, of bank accounts and debit cards for COTI. And in fact, it’s the first for Simplex, as well; we are the design partner. So this is like the raw alpha version of it. If you remember, people have been asking for this for quite a long time, and it’s taken quite a long time to release this. We didn’t want to delay anymore. And then we’ve just released this fall 2021 in alpha-beta version. It’s not perfect, yet. It is a solution, right? If you want to buy and sell crypto directly to a bank account, it’s pretty difficult these days. So it is a solution, but it’s a bit clunky and it’s a bit expensive. And we are aware of all this, obviously. And this is what we are working to improve with Simplex. So there’s a lot of work in the background of things that could be improved and fees that could be lowered. It’s important to note, COTI is taking zero dollars out of it. We are not profiting from it. We’re not generating revenue. This is a pure service. We have actually sponsored a few of the cards so people can get them fast. We’re not taking anything from it. This is a service. That said, it would be a better service and Simplex is working on it. And once it’s better then we’ll start publishing this, then we’ll start advertising, and then we’ll be ready for mass adoption.
With that in mind, I actually had a call earlier today, with the Simplex team, and mentioned that the next iteration of the product that they want to build will actually be connecting crypto to bank accounts so if you have a balance of crypto you can use that balance on your debit card. Like the next generation will be, you swipe a card, this automatically sends some of your cryptos, some of your COTI to pay for this purchase. It’s a bit more complicated, obviously technically, but it should lower fees because there are fewer heads in this process and there is no bank account. So this is still futuristic, but we have agreed to be Simplex’s design partner for this iteration, as well. We’ll take a bit longer, but that will happen down the line, as well. So the news is that we’re working on it and it will be better right away.
People ask about the payment institution license in Singapore. We’ve touched that quite a lot with this license. We can, in theory, operate an exchange. We don’t plan on opening an exchange; fiat to crypto, crypto to fiat transactions, you know, issue accounts, cross-border money transfer, wire merchant, and so on. So that happened. We’ve also covered this and how we’ve done that in terms of controlling companies, subsidiaries, and so on. You can read about that.
People have, also, asked about the EMI license that we plan on acquiring. While we still pursued that it’s really not a priority anymore because we’ve been able to open bank accounts without this license. Looking ahead to what we want to do with marketing and everything else, it’s just not that important anymore.
People ask again, “What’s the point of going through KYC?” “Why do we need KYC?” So, again, although we’ve answered that in the past, and I have to say bottom line, I’m happy we’re doing. KYC process for everybody. Although this is a nuisance both for the users and for our support team, everybody’s doing it right now. You know, exchanges, platforms, everybody is now moving from not only KYC to doing KYC to everyone. And it just proves that the fact that we’ve been doing that for years was actually the right call. It opens up a lot of options for us. It allows us to acquire licenses. It allows us to be regulated. It allows us to operate in a far better manner. And this is the winner’s game, you know, and we’re winners and this is how the game is played. And we always knew that this is how it will be played. And now it turns out that we’re right and this is why we continue to collect KYC. But, this is only for Viper. It does not mean we continuously collect KYC for each and every use case of our network. But to have a Viper Wallet and have COTI in it and to stake for the Treasury, we need to do KYC, and this will not change.
Now, the question is, “Where is Ledger?” We’ve been talking about this forever. You’re right. It has taken us a tremendous amount of time. You know, I always want to assume responsibility and but it’s not just us. Ledger has been pretty slow in the approval process. The good news is that the ball is in our court right now, and it usually means a lot faster when it’s in our court. We need to do a few fixes and then we’ll send it back to Ledger and then I just hope they won’t be slow, and we’ll have Native COTI on Ledger. It is taken way more than we expected. I’m really sorry about that, but I hope it will happen sometime soon.
People have been complaining that it seems that COTI is only focused on Cardano business; I think everyone got to see the road map. And what we see is big, we all agree it’s much more than just Cardano business. That said, you know, we are honored to be one of Cardano’s top partners. Cardano is huge! And not a lot of people have this opportunity. People would kill for this opportunity. And we have it. So we’re honored and privileged and not sorry for even one second for that. And obviously, you know, with the upcoming release of Djed and ADA Pay, there’s been a lot of conversation, a lot of opportunities around it, and we advertise whatever we sign-on. So you’ve seen a lot of noise around this. It does not mean that we’re not taking care of Layer-1 business and everything that we released. And I think, you know, the success of the Treasury is just evidence of that.
Related article: Djed’s Release Date Updates – What COTI and Cardano Are Doing To Address Security.
People ask, and I know people have been asking that for quite a long time, “When will they launch in the USA?” “Is launching in the USA a top priority?” Look, first of all, COTI is not launched in the U.S. people can hold COTI in the U.S.A. What you cannot do in the USA is open a Viper wallet and do the KYC process with us. It means that you cannot directly stake in the Treasury for the time being this will not change. I wish we could. And some people or some companies or projects out there do allow U.S. citizens to stake in everything. But that’s just their risk approach. But we do not share that risk approach. So, you know, we have a team that is constantly monitoring the U.S. and the U.S’s regulatory approach and are in deep contact with whatever is going on in the scene. The minute it will be possible or not risky, be sure that we will do that. We have an appetite to do that, but not right now. So we still monitor and we’ll reevaluate again.
Another question was, “When can we expect a fully functional Bridge?” So Bridge is functional and we open the Bridge both ways, Native to ERC-20 and ERC-20 to Native, and there have been some fixes in the weekend, as well. That’s it. I’m not too happy with how technically solid the breach is, even when it’s open in terms of liquidity. It still tends to malfunction, and I don’t like this at all. So I’ve instructed the teams to rewrite the Bridge from the ground up which would allow us to solve other issues, past issues like port attacks and other things. So the Bridge would be rewritten. I’m hoping to see a version out there around March. It does not mean that the Bridge would be closed until March, it would be open. But around March, I think it would be much better. And with that in mind, I also asked the teams to think about, you know, new assets because of MultiDAG 2.0, and maybe even new ports, maybe (inaudible) Cardano or Solana or whatnot, and that sort of version will be out there, probably July. And again, this is just an estimate. But yeah, that would be much better.
FINAL WORDS FROM SHAHAF
So, I think these are most or all of the questions that have been asked recently. I obviously, you know, there’s been a lot of good feedback as well. I don’t plan on reiterating that, but I just wanted to take the tough questions head-on. I hope that satisfies your curiosity and if there are any more questions just write them (inaudible). And it always reaches me, and I’m here to answer anything else. And again, you know, dire markets are usually a time when people complain, and it’s fine. We’re happy with it anyway. And the fundamentals upon which COTI’s built have never been stronger, and I think this year with everything that is happening, you know, the stablecoins and the Treasury and the fact that people or enterprises will start issuing tokens on top of the Trustchain, this is the big news! I’m happy to be here, happy for this position and the fact that we live in these times and I will see you around in the next video.
Stay COTI!
February Spotlight Article
For the February Spotlight Article, we interviewed Shahaf, one of the founders and CEO at COTI. COTI is an enterprise-grade fintech platform that empowers organizations to build their payment solution and digitize any currency to save time and money.
Hey Shahaf! Happy to connect today and learn more about the COTI project! Can you tell us more about the project and the problem you were addressing?
Thanks for having me! In a nutshell, COTI is a financial technology company that uses the blockchain to solve traditional banking problems. COTI’s goal is to meet the challenges of both centralized and decentralized finance (DeFi) such as fees, latency, global inclusion, risk, clogging, and complexity.
COTI will solve these challenges by introducing a new type of DAG-based base protocol and infrastructure that is scalable, fast, private, inclusive, low cost, and optimized for finance.
What are the most important things about COTI?
The most important thing to know is that we are the only layer 1 solution for payments. The other layer 1’s out there are optimized for other things. And now, with Trustchain 2.0 and the upcoming MultiDAG 2.0, we are going to top our game. Right now, we have the COTI coin, but in the future, we are going to present a new token standard, issuing more tokens, some of them will be created by COTI, some of them will be created by other enterprises and merchants who want to develop on the COTI network.
Going forward, how will COTI make an impact in the crypto space or on the world?
COTI has a one-of-a-kind technology. The core of COTI’s infrastructure lies within the Trustchain. COTI is based on DAG (directed acyclic graph) data structure, which works in tandem to drive scalability, processing over 10,000 transactions per second. The Multi-DAG allows enterprises to issue their coins on the COTI Truschain protocol. The Multi-DAG is not only optimized for stable coins, but it’s optimized for all coins and tokens.
Now, what are your accomplishments so far, and what are you most proud of?
Wow, we have had so many big milestones. Where do I begin?
- We launched our Mainnet (the Trustchain) back in 2019, now processing more than 10K TPS
. - We developed MultiDAG, which enables issuing tokens on our infrastructure.
- We launched the COTI bank account and debit card.
- We just launched the COTI Treasury, an algorithmic and decentralized pool of $COTI, where users can deposit $COTI and be rewarded for their participation.
- Our partnership with Cardano includes the following developments:
- ADA Pay- an ADA payment system for businesses, Issued by COTI and allows merchants to accept ADA payments with instant settlement.
- COTI is the official issuer of Djed – the first algorithmic stablecoin built on Cardano. It will use smart contracts to ensure price stability and maintain a base coin reserve, allowing users to use the stablecoin for DeFi transactions.
- COTI developed the Crypto Volatility Index (CVI), a VIX for crypto. CVI allows users to hedge themselves against market volatility and impermanent loss.
What is the future of COTI? For example, what new things to come, and what will it mean for the overall project?
We plan to evolve our offering from payments to a fully-encompassing next-generation financial system, creating value for $COTI holders. What to expect:
MultiDAG 2.0 – which can lead to a new token standard.
Djed and its reserve coins.
Leveraged volatility tokens.
Impermanent loss protection for CVI users.
More partnerships, growth opportunities, and a few more things worth waiting for.In addition, the fees from our ecosystem will be streamlined into the Treasury as rewards for our users.
Tell us about your team. Who are the people behind COTI?
I don’t want to gloat, but we have an amazing team at COTI. The COTI team includes engineers, mathematicians, economists, marketers, researchers, and veterans from the fintech and banking industries. For instance, Dr. Nir Haloani, COTI’s CTO, is the former co-founder and CTO of a company that IBM later acquired. We are growing rapidly, and our team is getting bigger.
Which partnerships have you engaged so far, and which ones are the most impactful?
We are fortunate to have some great partners. We have had a great relationship with Cardano over the last three years. Cardano ecosystem venture fund-cFund announced its first VC investment in COTI to accelerate integration and deepen the cooperation between COTI and Cardano. As mentioned earlier, some really impactful things we have done with Cardano are ADA Pay and Djed. Some other partnerships to highlight are the partnerships with, Chainlink, Simplex, Sundaeswap, Lovelace, Constellation, Ardana, and more.
Related article: World Mobile and COTI Unite to Bring the Unbanked ADA Pay | Is Africa Set To Dominate Crypto Adoption in 2022?
Thank you for your time! Do you have anything else to add?
Thank you for inviting me to do this interview. The last thing I would like to add is that 2022 will be a huge year for COTI. We launched the Treasury to make COTI more decentralized and give our users more opportunities to earn money. We are also moving from a single coin infrastructure to a multi-coin infrastructure and launching the Djed stablecoin built on Cardano. This year, many big things are happening, so make sure you follow us to stay up to date.
